Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC)
and CNN is often misleading--and almost always over-hyped.
"Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News," declared one typical
headline (Chicago Tribune , 3/24/03). "Fox News Channel Continues to
Crush CNN ," reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News , 2/3/04) in
a column comparing the rivalry to a party primary: "Fox News Channel
is winning the Nielsen caucuses." Last summer (8/17/03), the New York
Times Magazine declared, looking back at the period of the Iraq
invasion, "Fox was--and still is--trouncing CNN in the ratings."
After exposure to countless similar stories published since January
2002, when Fox was reported to have surpassed CNN in the Nielsen
ratings, one might naturally conclude that Fox has more viewers than
CNN .
But it's not true. On any given day, more people typically tune to
CNN than to Fox .
So what are the media reports talking about? With few exceptions,
stories about the media business report a single number for ratings
(often expressed two different ways--as "points" or "share"). This
number is often presented as if it were the result of a popularity
contest or a democratic vote. But it is actually the average number
of viewers watching a station or a show in a typical minute, based on
Nielsen Media Research's monitoring of thousands of households.
The average is arrived at by counting viewers every minute. Heavy
viewers--those who tune in to a station and linger there--have a
greater impact, as they can be counted multiple times as they watch
throughout the day.
When an outlet reports that CNN is trailing Fox , they are almost
invariably using this average tally, which Fox has been winning for
the past two years. For the year 2003, Nielsen's average daily
ratings show Fox beating CNN 1.02 million viewers to 665,000.
But there is another important number collected by Nielsen (though
only made available to the firm's clients) that tells another story.
This is the "cume," the cumulative total number of viewers who watch
a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. Unlike the
average ratings number the media usually report, this number gives
the same weight to the light viewer, who tunes in for a brief time,
as it does to the heavy viewer.
How can CNN have more total viewers when Fox has such a commanding
lead in average viewers? Conventional industry wisdom is that CNN
viewers tune in briefly to catch up on news and headlines, while Fox
viewers watch longer for the opinion and personality-driven
programming. Because the smaller total number of Fox viewers are
watching more hours, they show up in the ratings as a higher average
number of viewers.
CNN regularly claims a cume about 20 percent higher than Fox 's
(Deseret Morning News , 1/12/04). For instance, in April 2003, during
the height of the fighting in Iraq, CNN 's cume was significantly
higher than Fox 's: 105 million viewers tuned into CNN compared to 86
million for Fox (Cablefax , 4/30/03). But in the same period, the
ratings reported by most media outlets had Fox in the lead, with an
average of 3.5 million viewers to CNN 's 2.2 million.
Even among Fox 's core audience of conservatives, CNN has an edge in
total viewership. A study by the ad agency Carat USA (Hollywood
Reporter , 8/13/03) found that 37 percent of viewers calling
themselves "very conservative" watch CNN in the course of a week,
while only 32 percent tune to Fox .
On Sep 10, 2007, at 6:03 PM, Kevin Brown wrote:
yea well jambands.com is not your FOX News type media. Also Fox News
the biggest ratings on Cable news. That means majority share. It is
really bugging Liberals that Conservatives are rising in America!
--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, Gary Wien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Thank God that nobody (except for a few fans of Fox News) pays
> attention to her or believes anything she says...
>
>
>
> On Sep 10, 2007, at 4:45 PM, Kevin Brown wrote:
>
> > --- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "2fine4u" <sharon_b283@> wrote:
> > >
> > > You need help!
> > >
> > >
> > > --- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Brown" <jerseykev@>
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2006_06_23.06.phtml
> > > >
> > > > great Ann Coulter Interview...
> > > >
> > >
> >
> > That's the name of her book.
> >
> > Actually: Godless: The church of Liberalism
> >
> >
> >
>
